Suarez wears them but where do knitted Adidas football boots fit in to the weekly five-a-side?

Not your usual game of 5-a-side and where are the knitted boots? (Picture: Reuters/Toby Melville)

While there is constant development in sports technology, the rules of football never change.

I’m not talking about the rules of proper football, they flicker unpredictably from season to season like a novice lino’s flag. I mean the silent rules of the real game – five-a-side with your mates, the closest most of us get to the Premier League.

I’ve been having my shins kicked, grazing my legs on astro turf and getting red imprints of over-inflated footballs on my thighs for about 30 years.

Here are my ten rules of five-a-side:

1. The owner of the ball shall decide who plays, pick the teams and collect the money at the end.

2. Five players are required for each team. Or four each. Or four against three with a rush ‘keeper, providing this arrangement is only found out when everyone turns up.

3. At least one player on the field must be either hungover or playing through an injury.

4. The fattest player shall bring plush new goalie gloves.

5. Breaks can only take place for a quick drink or smoke.

6. A ball kicked over a fence, under a car or into a pond must be retrieved by whoever kicked it.

7. There is no referee – and therefore no fouls.

This can’t happen (Picture: Getty)

8. Handballs must be ignored, providing the offending player declares ‘it was ball to hand’.

9. Players can only leave once the winning team has been decided – and this has no bearing on the score, only by the result of ‘next goal wins’ or ‘first to three’.

10. The above rule can only be invoked at least ten minutes after a player has admitted he is late for work, or someone gets injured.

These are the rules I adhere to every Friday morning, rain or shine.

And the same that applied when I was a teenager, playing on the field behind my parents’ house. Or when I was at primary school, kicking round a tennis ball on a concrete playground (we weren’t allowed full-size leather balls after a dinner lady got knocked out, taking one in the face).

Like every casual footballer, I hate a lot about it. I hate leaving a warm house to play in the cold and getting shouted at by rubbish players who compensate by moaning.

While I don’t mind the aches and pains I suffer for days after a game, I hate that I don’t remember ever noticing them when I was younger. I hate getting nutmegged and doing my stint in goal. And I hate losing, even though the result is meaningless. Always have.

But I love it too.

Every weekend, we’re this guy (Picture: EPA/ALBERTO MARTIN)

I love that this idiotic thing I do with my mates is the same thing as Cristiano Ronaldo does for Real Madrid, Paul Gascoigne did for England and Steve Bull did for Wolverhampton Wanderers.

I love threading a perfect pass from midfield, right through the defence. Because I know Wayne Rooney would have done exactly the same thing – and no better.

I love winning a clean tackle. I love one-twoing the ball off a wall and around a defender. I love scoring and I love winning. Unless you play football, or another competitive sport each week, how do you get your fix of winning?

I mentioned sports technology before because I just read about the new Adidas Samba Primeknit. They’re knitted boots! Luis Suarez is likely to be wearing them when Uruguay play England at the World Cup in Brazil this summer. Adidas says they provide the ‘comfort and responsiveness of playing barefoot with the protection of a traditional design’.

Suarez shows off his knitted adidas (Picture: adidas)

I like them because I’ve got a brown pair of Adidas Samba trainers so it looks like I’m ahead of the curve.

How they’ll work for us five-a-siders, I’m not sure. Can they really offer the protection from your mate’s heavy challenge that traditional leather can?

The Nike Tiempo 94 boot (Picture: Nike)

Nike’s latest idea is to celebrate a classic boot with a trainer tribute. And by another coincidence which makes me look like I’m on the crest of the fashion wave, the boots getting the trainer treatment are the ones I wear every Friday – Nike Tiempo.

I like them because they’re comfortable and strong as hell. But they’ve got a great pedigree too. When Brazil and Italy met in the 1994 World Cup final in the USA, ten of the players on the field wore Tiempos. That’s a pretty good endorsement in itself.

Add to that the fact that 20 years later, the boot’s latest incarnation is worn by the likes of Carlos Tevez and Gerard Pique.

I wonder if in another two decades’ time Adidas will be launching a tribute fashion shoe based on the world’s first knitted boot?

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